D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[Swanosaurus]

That is the burden of being the GM, you put in a ton of work but what you may want to play may not align with what the players want. The solution is to find players who want to play the games you want to run rather than getting upset that your current players don't have preferences that align with yours.

Depends ... I usally play with people I consider friends - and part of that is that I'm willing to leave my comfort zone once on a while, and they're as well. It might not always work out, but as far as I'm concerned, trying things your friends are into usually is a good way to broaden your horizon.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are assuming that people are conditioned by D&D to want a D&D experience rather than people liking D&D because it provides the experience they want.

And some appear to be assuming the opposite.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So changing their sound, being innovative is a bad thing? I thought being innovative was always positive!

On a more serious note, I feel for bands that have people that latch on to a specific song or even album. Sometimes you simply can't catch lightning in a bottle again. On the other hand, there have been bands that I enjoyed in the past that became "uncool" simply because they had a song used in a movie or similar. Some people value being, or at least appearing to be, unique and different more than what band they listen to or products they buy.

Changing your sound and being innovative are not synonyms.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Depends ... I usally play with people I consider friends - and part of that is that I'm willing to leave my comfort zone once on a while, and they're as well. It might not always work out, but as far as I'm concerned, trying things your friends are into usually is a good way to broaden your horizon.

I exclusively play with friends and family, too, and have been willing to try a wide range of games. But I am someone who enjoys learning about other RPGs and eagerly learns the rules of any game I play (except for Pathfinder, I immediately decided to not even bother trying to absorb all those rules and terms). Most people aren't like that and that's fine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People only have so much free time whereas everyone eats multiple times a day and there is a lot more overhead in learning a new system than eating food that has been put in front of you. That people want to spend their limited free time doing something they know they enjoy rather than learning a new system and doing something they likely won't enjoy as much is not some irrational attitude.

Why is it likely they wouldn't enjoy the new thing as much?

 

[TheSword]

This is a chicken and egg thing.

Only to a point.

Starter rules, a substantial starter adventure (rather than 20 pages tossed into the back of the book) a decent streaming of said adventure by a passionate creator or their mates, and basic rules set compatible for Roll20 and/or Foundry should be achievable within a 6 months to a year of release. If you don’t do these things then you are attempting to compete with other folks who do.

The same goes for a quality series of linked adventures. Too much expectation is put on new DMs to be able to design encounters and the wider world. The reality is most people learn by emulating. If you haven’t produced something to emulate and expand upon then straight away you’re setting the bar of entry very high.

Too often I see new RPGs rush to release expansions for their games adding more rules rather than getting the ones they have released in front of more people In am accessible way.

If it’s chicken and egg, then I see folks laying too many eggs and not spending enough time thinking about how you’re going to hatch them.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

So what?
We know that it was first.
We know that it is dominant.
We can outline in what ways it is a really good game that has many features that make it really fun for a broad range of people.

How these three factors are related is speculation; it can be fun and enlightening to speculate, sure. It can also be annoying - and if someone hates D&D, sure, they will say "it's just succesful because it was first, because of Hasbro's marketing budget, because of Stranger Things ..." I get that this is annoying. But the answer to that should not be to deny any suggestion that there might be an element of historical contingency to the rise of D&D.

So yeah, in part, D&D is big because its great. There are a lot of other great RPGs out there. Does this mean that in a parallel reality, they could fill D&Ds spot? I seriously don't know. But there's no need to get defensive about the simple statement that, among the things that assure the continued dominance of D&D is the simple that a lot of people think that RPG=D&D. It certainly isn't the only reason.

So what? Because it goes to the heart of why so many people want to play D&D and are resistant to playing other games.

 

[Oofta]

Changing your sound and being innovative are not synonyms.

You can't have innovation without change.

 

[Swanosaurus]

So what? Because it goes to the heart of why so many people want to play D&D and are resistant to playing other games.

Okay, I'm kind of lost ... I thought you were basically saying "D&D is top because of it's excellence, and claiming that there may be other factors involved is nothing but a cheap attack", but maybe I misread that.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Why is it likely they wouldn't enjoy the new thing as much?

Because most things in life we don't enjoy as much as our favorite things. You don't think most music is good as the bands you love, most food isn't as good as your favorite food. So if you listen to another band or eat another food simply because someone else really likes it you are probably not going to enjoy as much as what you already really like. It's just simple odds; any person will grade most things as around average or worse.